


This isn't gonna fcking work, you inbred

by Kara_luna



Series: A Song of Fuck You, Everyone Gets a Happy Ending Because I Said So [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: BAMF Catelyn Tully Stark, Catelyn Tully Stark Doesn't Hate Jon Snow, Catelyn is actually a good human being and honestly, Catelyn knows stuff, Comedy, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Jon Snow Knows Something, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Jon Snow looks exactly like a dragon and no is BUYING YOUR SHIT NED, Jon snow has targaryen hair, Light Angst, M/M, None of this is serious like I don;t even know what THIS IS, POV Catelyn Tully Stark, People just kind of chill and treat each other with basic respect and dignity, Robert Baratheon is an actual ASS BITE ME I WILL DECK YOU, SO MUCH HUMOR, Sansa is also a fcking queen so BITE ME, we stan a queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24855493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_luna/pseuds/Kara_luna
Summary: Catelyn Stark is many things, but blind is not one of them. Her husband comes marching into the courtyard and has the audacity to expect her to believe the baby with bone white hair and purple eyes is actually his. So she does what her house's words have dictated for generations before her birth, she chooses her family and protects them with everything she has, because she may have been born a trout but you better believe there's more than a little bit of wolf hiding beneath her scales.In another world, the song is sung with tragedy and fear and so much death, full of pain and grief and so much horror chasing away any hint of joy left.But this isn't that world.In this world, the song is sung by a thousand different voices full of love and forgiveness and mercy, people who choose to be kind when they don't have to be, who forgive when they could punish, and decide on the path with the least bodies. A world where maybe people don't need to stab each other in the back, kindness can be a strength rather than a weakness, and a dove can learn to fly with unclipped wings, because in this world? Everyone has the right to freedom.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Bran Stark, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark, Jon Snow & Catelyn Tully Stark, Jon Snow/Robb Stark, Theon Greyjoy & Jon Snow, Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark
Series: A Song of Fuck You, Everyone Gets a Happy Ending Because I Said So [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798237
Comments: 26
Kudos: 312





	This isn't gonna fcking work, you inbred

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who knows about the project I'm working on, this is definitely NOT it. Literally just reading angst and I'm like, why does this entire series have to be so damn depressing and then it hit me like a fcking frying pan. I can make it NOT sad!!! So i did. Basically Catelyn is like, not having Ned's shit like no that white haired, purple eyed baby is NOT yours Eddard Stark, how dumb do you THINK I AM. Also, Robb and Jon NOT raised as brothers and don't actually know they're closely related because all they know is that they have some distant relation cause Catelyn told Jon about his parents but like- he obviously can't say anything so he just continues with the whole "we're not related so deal with it" schtik. Also, everyone just kinda cool with gay people because I fcking said so, so fight me. 
> 
> Anyway, it's legit 3:00 in the morning and I, like, have stuff to do tomorrow like a productive member of society (ha! As if) so I'mma go to bed before I actually fight someone over some stupid shit cause I'm THAT delirious from sleep deprivation so BEEYYYYYYYYIIIIIII

The day Eddard comes riding through the gates, finally returning to his dutiful wife and newborn son, Catelyn realizes the true idiocy of man for the first time. He swings down from his horse and marches up to her with heavy footsteps and slumped shoulders that show just how much the war and blood and death has truly broken down his spirit. The only thoughts running through her head up to that point, center around how she and their son will help bring him back from all this grief, all this horror that’s befallen their families. 

All those thoughts cut off immediately once she realizes there’s something in his large arms. Something _squirming_. 

“Cat… I’ve dishonored you in the worst possible way. I am _so_ sorry.”

He hangs his head, and gods be good, he is an unexpectedly _not_ horrible actor given the very real looking shame blanketing his features and weighing on his previously strong looking shoulders. 

It takes a moment of blinking to truly understand the circumstances she’s found herself in. It also takes every bit of will power she has not to thump this stupid, foolish, honorable, beautiful man over the back of the head once everything registers. 

Catelyn just sighs, long and deep, pinching the bridge of her nose as if preparing herself, because she most definitely _is_ preparing herself. 

“Ned. Please tell me you are _jesting_.” He glances up at her at the complete lack of anger in her voice. His jaw works as he obviously attempts to figure out how to respond to that. It hits her suddenly and she just wants to laugh and cry and hit him all at once. 

He absolutely memorized a speech to give to her! He actually decided what he was going to say and now that she’s gone of the script, he has no idea what to do. 

“Cat, I understand this is a difficult sit-” 

“ _Eddard Stark_ .” He promptly shuts his mouth and Catelyn totally _does not_ feel three feet taller knowing that she shut up a man who just overthrew an entire dynasty nearly single handedly. 

“We will discuss this in private, preferably our chambers where you may also meet your son.” 

Leaning towards him so that only he can hear her, she whispers one sentence that cements everything she suspects given the way he freezes like a doe before a wolf. 

“My newest nephew may come as well.” 

* * *

Jon hits his second name day and his hair is just as silver as it was the day she met him. Ned still refuses to speak of it, but it’s fairly obvious when Jon’s favorite flowers are blue roses and he has some strange fixation with Lyanna’s statue in the crypts because, and I quote, “She looks like me.”

Ned refuses to say anything on the matter to anyone and Catelyn refuses to just leave it at that. To any who ask, he is a relative, and by the time Jon’s old enough to understand what ‘bastard’ means, there’s hardly anyone in Winterfell who even remembers Ned’s initial claims. 

The years are uneventful for the most part up until an actual real life plot twist hits her in the face like a fucking frying pan. 

Just ignore the following:

  1. “Robb _put that done right now! That is not edible, ROBBERT STARK YOU CANNOT EAT-_ **_NED!”_**



2\. “Jon, your parents loved you very much-”

“But they’re _dead_!”

“Uh. Well. Yes Jon, unfortunately they both passed away before you were born-”

“But how can they love me if they died instead of raising me!”

“Jon… Jon it doesn’t work like that… **_NED!”_ **

3\. “But mama, if Theon’s a prince, then why can’t he marry me?”

“Hold on, I have a list… One, because your ten and you aren’t marrying _anyone_ anytime soon. Two, because Theon is allowed to marry whoever his family choses for him which I cannot control. Three, Theon is a lord not a prin- Wait, Sansa, why do you think Theon’s a prince?”

“Don’t you and Papa know? _His_ papa declared himself a _king again!”_

_“HE DID WHAT-_ **_NED!”_ **

* * *

Robb grows quickly like a weed, and by the time he’s ten and two, he’s already at her shoulder, with Jon not far behind him. 

The ironborn boy comes to live with them as a ward that year, and perhaps in another world Catelyn would have ignored and disapproved of him, but this is not that world. 

In this world, Catelyn has had to explain to Jon why his hair is white and who his parents are and no you cannot tell anyone not even Robb- and she’s raised him to be a friend to her son and a companion he can always depend on, rather than a brother. 

In this world, she’s watched since they were merely infants in the same crib because they wailed and howled like death itself when separated. 

In this world, she’s spent nearly a decade and a half sitting them both down for supper with their siblings and watched Robb insist on eating half of the food on Jon’s plate to the point where they stop having two plates at all and Arya eventually catches on and demands to do the same with Bran. 

In this world, she stood by and watched with a gentle smile as Robb taught Jon how to shoot an arrow properly and they both blushed like children when her son got impatient and grabbed his friend from behind to fix his stance. 

In this world, they are not brothers and Jon is treated as a ward while Robb is treated like an heir, and somehow that only makes them all the more inseparable. 

So when Ned marches through the gates, once again with a child fresh from the battlefield and the victor of a war, all she does is pinch her nose and sigh. This time Ned’s apologetic glance and her halfhearted glare because really Ned another stray! We only have so many rooms in the keep you know- is enough of a conversation. 

She takes him into the keep, completely ignoring the way he tightens up under her hands as she guides him along with her. She takes one hand off his shoulder to open the door to the great hall and the child flinches and- no. No that _won’t do._ Catelyn’s determination is only increased at the way a child, _a child_ , just flinched because she raised her hand. 

She marches him through the hall and cares not a bit for the way people watch expectedly for her to seat the Stark’s ward at a lower table. She huffs in irritation at their ignorance. The boy is seated exactly where he should be and where he will stay, right by Sansa’s side. 

Her daughter, ever the little lady, blushes prettily as an older boy who is not in any way unattractive, is sat right beside her. Arya is already fighting Bran over the second leg of lamb on their one combined plate and Robb is being his usual over protective self masked as chivalry, and refusing to let Jon have a spoonful of the stew without him blowing on it first. 

Robb’s look of horror and indignation when Jon grows tired of his hovering and grabs the serving spoon and jams the entire thing in his little mouth without breaking eye contact is too much for the rest of the family, and the entire table, including her stoic husband, is overtaken with laughter. 

Thankfully, the jovial atmosphere seems to make the ironborn boy relax a bit into his seat. Then Sansa takes a glance around the table, Catelyn and Ned, Jon and Robb, Arya and Bran, and comes to a sudden realization. 

The way her eyes practically light up makes Catelyn snort into her stew, swatting at Ned when he offers her a napkin. Sansa then, without any warning or explanation, heaps half of the offered food on the table onto her plate with what can only be described as a smile of the combined radiance of the sun and stars, and pushes the boy’s- theon apparently- empty plate _off the gods forsaken table._

She can actually feel Ned shaking with silent laughter beside her and all she can manage is to silently ask the spirits why me? Theon looks completely baffled at what his seatmate is doing but makes no moves to push away the giant plate of food Sansa’s shoving between them. 

Her daughter, somehow still remembering some of her manners, excitably strikes up a conversation. The boy slowly seems to understand and begins to respond to her chatter, even following the other’s lead and beginning to eat off his and Sansa’s shared plate. 

Well, Catelyn contemplates, it could have been _much_ worse. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When the letter from Robert Baratheon arrives and is delivered by the maester to her, instead of her husband who is off doing lordly things somewhere, Catelyn contemplates what she’s about to lose. 

Down below in the training yard Jon and Robb are helping Bran to shoot, giving him pointers she is almost certain aren’t helpful in any way and that she is definitely certain they are completely aware of. 

Theon, of course, isn’t with them to teach her second youngest to shoot an arrow despite being the undisputed best at it, because he’s busy in the sewing tower with her eldest daughter. They’re legitimately Jon and Robb come again and Catelyn can’t even be angry about it when Theon flaunts around the keep in the decent embroidery he did himself, taught to him by her most patient child, and the downright unbelievable workmanship of Sansa herself. 

The way Sansa smiles like her cheeks are about to crack from the force of it whenever she sees him wearing her gloves or tunic is only trumped by the absolute pride and joy written all over her face when she wears the crookedly stitched dress Theon spent months making for her in secret or anything else he’s created while she sat by his side and helped him straighten his lines and tuck in the loose threads. 

Perhaps in a different world, Catelyn would have pushed Robb and Theon together, she would have left Sansa with no one but the snobbish daughter of a cook who looked down on anyone who wasn’t highborn and the perfect lady, and Arya would have run wild without Bran’s calming presence beside her to keep her somewhat in check.

Perhaps Jon would have been ostracized by everyone, growing sullen and lonely and desperate for an escape. Perhaps Theon would have grown to be much the same, fucking everything that moved and puffing out his chest, teasing and ridiculing and bullying, all in an attempt to finally be enough. 

But this is not that world. 

In this world, Theon and Sansa became thick as thieves, balancing each other out perfectly. Sansa learns to speak her mind, to be wild and free like a true stark wolf, to throw her head back and laugh with the wind in her hair and mint on her breath. 

In this world, Theon finds someone who he can talk to, confide in, be himself with who would never ever judge him for weakness or for not being enough, because to her, he was already _more_ than enough. His arrogance and bawdy jokes and puffed up attitude are only in jest, never spiteful, never cruel, and never maliciously at someone else’s expense. 

In this world, Theon never has to be afraid of his best friend being stolen from him, never had to compete against or feel threatened by a bastard brother, because Sansa has only eyes for him and her brothers (and grudgingly her sister). 

In this world, Jon and Theon took one look at their starkly different features from their host family, glanced at their best friends who happened to both be tall, redheads with blue eyes, and immediately struck up a friendship. Not because they’re outsiders, not because they're outcasts, but because they’re puzzle pieces that are slightly different in shape then everyone else’s. 

But in this world, Robb and Sansa both happened to fit with those particular puzzles pieces, and in this world, the sea calling Theon’s name was so much less important than giving Sansa an amazing name day present, and Jon going to the night's watch was a passing fancy that didn’t survive Robb’s tears and Catelyn’s lecture of how much the family loved him and how much they would miss him and Jon what would I even _do_ with Arya if you _weren’t here-_

In this world, Catelyn stares at the letter in her hand and recites her house’s words. 

_Family, duty, honor._

She looks down again at her boys fooling around in the yard. Jon is tossing his head back, laughing so hard it shakes his entire body. His hair is loose and curling on his shoulders, white as bone, and when he notices her watching, he grins and waves to her. 

Her lips quirk into a warm smile at his antics, sardonically waving back at him. He turns back to Bran as he misses the target again. He fixes her son’s bowarm and moves his feet, careful and gentle and patient despite Bran’s whining and stomping. He moves back to his place beside her eldest and it’s as if she’s watching history repeat itself. 

This Targaryen with shoulder length hair half pulled back and violet eyes, a calm beauty in him that speaks of the makings of a maester or scholar with the build of a knight. And beside him, grinning with his teeth as if they’re fangs to be barred in amusement, is a wild Stark wolf with dark curls and an untamable freeness. 

They are Lyanna and Rhaegar come again, she realizes. The dragon and the wolf, the heir and the spare, the poet and the warrior… And the truth hits Catelyn like a warhorse. Watching them like this, the way one shifts and the other responds, one moves forward and the other shifts back, one turns right and the other slips around them like water, that this is truly history repeating itself because Jon is not rapespawn. 

No, he isn’t, and she’s always known it deep down, but _this_ is the moment it’s finally come to the forefront of her mind. _This_ is when she actually looks at the puzzle she’s already solved and understands what image has been formed. 

They died because they were young and wild and free, and the stags refused to let them be. 

They died because they were naive and irresponsible, and foolish, and Robert Baratheon couldn’t let them be happy together. 

In another world, the song is sung much the same. Both die worlds apart and decades between, forever separated and leagues away from ever reaching each other. In that world, the stags don’t win, but they take everyone else down with them until there is nothing left but ashes and blood and rulers that hate their crowns more than anything else in the universe but wear them regardless because the thrones they sit upon were won by the blood of those they loved. 

But this is not that world. 

In this world, she writes back to the King to tell him of an unexpected outbreak of chickenpox throughout Winterfell. She writes to him about how much Ned is needed in Winterfell with this sudden sickness and how they need him for winter and all the preparations and how very sorry he is but it’s simply impossible despite the death of Lord Arryn. 

In this world, 

she 

burns 

the 

damn 

letter. 

**Author's Note:**

> Also this is a one shot but like, if anyone's interested, I may expand on this...? So i guess. Like ask if you want that? Idfk, just live your best life, M'Kay!


End file.
